Certain automobile and truck tire designs in combination with certain drive train configurations produce tire wear patterns that create noise and can also result in safety problems during use. When new tire designs are tested, existing two dimensional techniques for documenting tire wear patterns, such as photographs and pressure sensitive paper, are inadequate to document the three dimensional wear patterns that are characteristic of irregular tread wear. Irregular tread wear manifests itself as tread elements that are either worn at an angle or have some elements that are worn more than others.
Three dimensional wear patterns can be documented by making a cast of the tire tread. The preparation of a cast involves two separate steps: (1) producing a negative mold from the tire tread and (2) making a positive cast from the negative mold. Existing tire casting methods have traditionally used plaster negatives and plaster or elastomeric positives. These techniques are messy to use because of the tire cleanup steps after the preparations of the negative mold. Current methods are also relatively slow, with curing times of several hours to overnight. These methods are not suitable for the short turnaround times required for tire testing, during which a maximum of 30 minutes is available to make a negative mold of the tire tread while the tires are off of the vehicle for inspection.